Dec. 1, 2016, 9:16 a.m.

A key scene in "Jackie" with Natalie Portman on Air Force One after the assassination of the president with Lyndon Baines Johnson played by John Carroll Lynch, being sworn in. (Fox Searchlight)

Jackie, we hardly knew you.

Though no more than that single name is needed to bring to mind an entire universe of memories, mythology and celebrity, the woman it conjures had a core mystery that remained unassailable despite media scrutiny of the most relentless kind.

To convincingly pull the curtain back on that kind of a life, to be true to the tragic history and alive to the unexplored drama, to take smart and fearless ownership of what could have been an overly familiar story could not have been more difficult.

Dec. 1, 2016, 9:03 a.m.

Weddings, babies and teenage emancipations — oh, my! Fans of “Nashville,” rejoice: New episodes of your favorite country music drama are on the way.

CMT, which picked up the TV series for a fifth season after ABC canceled it, released the first official trailer for the return of the show centered around the always-complicated lives of country music stars Rayna James (Connie Britton) and Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere).

Nov. 30, 2016, 5:38 p.m.

Brothers Sid and Marty Krofft, creators of family television shows "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Land of the Lost," dicuss their latest creation, "Mutt & Stuff."

Amazon Studios has picked up the Sid & Marty Krofft-produced series “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” – a remake of their classic children’s TV show from the 1970s – after the show had been presented to viewers as a pilot.

“Sigmund and the Sea Monster” centers on two brothers, Johnny and Scotty, who along with their cousin Robyn befriend Sigmund, a friendly young sea monster. David Arquette stars as Captain Barnabus, a seagoing villain-type who relentlessly pursues the mini sea monster. The show will be part of Amazon’s Prime Video lineup.

As chronicled in an article earlier this year, the Krofft brothers have been on a bit of a roll lately. They have a successful ongoing kids program in “Mutt and Stuff” on Nickelodeon. Their action show, “Electra Woman & Dyna Girl,” launched online on Fullscreen. They are also looking to revive other past hits “The Bugaloos,” “H.R. Pufnstuf” and a new reinvention of “Land of the Lost.”

Nov. 30, 2016, 4:13 p.m.

With Kanye West finally out of the hospital after more than a week of treatment, the speculative drumbeats around “why did he snap?” and “what’s going on?” were still going strong.

First the news: Word that the rapper had checked out of UCLA Medical Center was confirmed by The Times on Wednesday.

Here are some of the tidbits that are circulating about what’s up with Yeezy and his family, and what might have sent him into treatment for exhaustion, sleep deprivation and possibly a few other things.

Nov. 30, 2016, 1:12 p.m.

Canadian police officers are turning to an alternative form of punishment in order to deter people from drinking and driving this holiday season.

Police officers in the town of Kensington have concocted a new plan in hopes of preventing people from the offense: music by Nickelback. Are we having fun yet?

"When we catch you, and we will catch you, on top of a hefty fine, a criminal charge and a year's driving suspension, we will also provide you with a bonus gift of playing the offices copy of Nickelback in the cruiser on the way to jail," the Kensington police said in a Facebook post, which included tips about planning ahead to avoid drinking and driving.

It’s no secret that “Power Rangers” is a departure from the original TV series, and the latest concept art for the movie’s new Alpha 5 is further proof.

Even fans who thought the updated looks for Rita, the Rangers' suits and the Zords were adequate mental preparation for any other redesigns were likely surprised by Alpha’s new design. To borrow some words from Alpha: “Ay yi yi yi yi.”

Revealed by IGN, this new take on the Power Ranger ally is more than a bit of a departure from the character's original look.

Nov. 30, 2016, 10:34 a.m.

A banner hung in place in a barracks at Camp Tulelake depicts what it looked like when it housed Japanese American internees during World War II. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Over the last month, I’ve logged some serious mileage across California for a story about race and the national parks that was published on Sunday. It explores the ways in which the National Park Service, a federal agency originally charged with protecting wilderness, has come to conserve places that have been the sites of both contentious and inspiring incidents related to race in American history.

As part of the assignment, I toured the Port Chicago Naval Magazine outside San Francisco and sat next to the graves of labor activists Cesar and Helen Chavez in the bucolic Tehachapi Mountains outside Bakersfield. I visited the sites of the former Japanese American internment camps at Tulelake and Manzanar.

On one of those journeys, I casually posted a photograph of an old theater on Tulelake’s main street on social media. My pal Nate Chinen, a New York-based jazz writer whose father was Japanese American, left me a comment: “This is the town where my father spent his first four years, in internment.”